The Crimean Referendum Vote: A Photo Summary

The much anticipated, if largely moot, Crimean referendum vote whether to break away from Ukraine and join Russia, began early on Sunday, even as Kiev is accusing Moscow of rapidly building up its armed forces on the peninsula in "crude violation" of an international treaty.

According to Reuters, Ukrainian acting defence minister Ihor Tenyukh said Russian troop numbers in Crimea were now almost double the level agreed with Moscow, and Kiev's forces were taking "appropriate measures" along the border with Russia. Tenyukh dismissed any suggestion that a militarily and economically weakened Ukraine might give up in the face of the Russian power. "Decisions will be taken depending on how events unfold. But let me say once again that this is our land and we will not be leaving it," he told Interfax news agency.

In the meantime, the vote has begun: "I have voted for Russia," said Svetlana Vasilyeva, a veterinary nurse who is 27. "This is what we have been waiting for. We are one family and we want to live with our brothers."

Last month's fall of Moscow-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich following deadly protests in Kiev has aroused fears among some of the country's native Russian-speakers.

"We want to leave Ukraine because Ukrainians told us that we are people of a lower kind. How can you stay in such a country?" said Vasilyeva.

Polling stations opened at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) and close 12 hours later. Provisional results will be released late on Sunday with the final tally expected a day or two later.

Crimea's 1.5 million voters have two options: union with Russia or giving their region, which is controlled by pro-Kremlin politicians, the broad right to determine its own path and choose relations with whom it wants - including Moscow.

Polling stations opened at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) and close 12 hours later. Provisional results will be released late on Sunday with the final tally expected a day or two later. According to Bloomberg, as of noon, the vote turnout at 44%, citing Crimean referendum chief Mikhail Malyshev in Simferopol. Malyshev also reported that the Sevastopol turnout at 49% at noon and has risen to 64% by 3pm, adding that no voting violations reported. The Crimean deputy PM said that he expects an 80%+ turn out in the vote with over 80% voting in favor of joining Russia.

Those curious what the Ukrainians are thinking:

Kiev Youth Pessimistic: "Everyone knows that Putin at this moment he wants all Ukraine. Crimea is just the 1st step." #CBC#Ukraine

So even as the vote which is merely a placeholder as Russia continues its military build up in the Crimea, Russian troops keep piling along the Eastern border, and with headlines like this hitting the tape:

True story: at my office they were taking food and $$ collections to feed the homeless at a soup kitchen downtown. After gathering donations, then they came back and asked for volunteers to serve the food to the bums who were scoring free shit, and clean up after them. I asked about the type of work, and it basically was waitoring for them. They said that our doing so (being slaves for bums) would give them the dignity they deserve (it seems they've earned it by sitting on a street doing jackshit and smelling like garbage).

I told them to fuck off. Money and fucking food is not enough any more - now you have to serve it and wipe the asses of bums. And the kicker to that was ... during your volunteering shifts you are not allowed to accept or make phone calls or send texts - just work like a dog for free to be a slave to fucking bums.

A young co worker in his 20's decided to get involved with a 'small group' at hic church. They were going to 'feed the homeless'. He contacted local businesses and arranged to pick up food items in his truck and help serve the homeless.

The next day he had a shit load of bagels, bread and buns in the back of his truck. All perfectly good and unopened. I asked him what the deal was.

It seems the homeless 'didn't like that kind' and refused to eat it. They did eat the store bought lasagna, however. "I guess I'll feed it to the birds or something" he said.

+1. This is just one of the MANY perversions and subversions of 'Christianity'.

When Christians acquire or regain the RECIPROCITY and QUID-PRO-QUO principles, it has a chance of becoming relevant again and being saved from itself.

There is NOTHING (explicit) in the Sermon on the Mount speech that makes the prescribed behavior an EXCLUSIVE (mandatory) code, but is being interpreted as such. With a SLIGHT word changing (recording) and interpretation, it could easily open the door for a different view: " Do good whenever you can, sometimes its best to not escalate things and to 'turn the other cheek', etc."

Christianity has become the religion of peasants, sheep and slaves -- and the ruling-class, predators and wolves have learned to position themselves to rule over these... Sheeple. For these (and other reasons), I have disavowed it years ago, and been MUCH happier for it: No more bullshit and leverage of "Guilt" and other sheeple-concepts, where Wankers tell you what life, the world and the universe is all about, by citing super-aged bullshit from semi-literate tribes of 'questionable hygiene' and IQ. Bah! No wonder Zionists and Muslim Wahabists don't respect Christianity: In Darwinistic terms, it doesn't deserve respect these days. That's why I call 'Jesus' the "Hippie God", compared to the "Warrior God" that Zionists and Muslim Wahabists have.

Sorry for the digression (and soapbox speech), but dammit, somebody has to shake the bed, in the hopes of waking up some people. Now back to the Crimea River elections...

First post I've seen that raises a perspective I shared for years Be kind to everyone, but be very selective when chosing friends and community. and be just as selective when chosing who and what to support. Values, including reciprocity and mutuality, are important indeed.

Nice try at Deflection & Redirection. Let me spell it out for you, the sub-80 IQ crowd and the Trolls:

Kirk hates... fucking despises Lies, Cruelty & Oppression, Fraud and Hypocrisy of all kinds -- REGARDLESS of SOURCE. Not critiquing (not the same as 'attacking') one's own (ZH) hinders "Lessons Learned" from occurring, and prevents Growth of one's group (ZH).

Hope this clear it up, as to why I seem so "harsh" on some issues, positions or people. Put another way...

"TRUTH is the only God I shall worship and serve. There are NO other Gods other than TRUTH --only cheap impostors, whether Earthly or Celestial. And ALL TRUTH originates in the Universal and Immutable Laws of Nature -- not the laws of puny day-flies, called Men." -Kirk.

It is not the sub-80 IQ crowd that needs your disdain or mindless lecturing. You are the worst troll of all, leaving your skid mark on nearly every article posted on ZH. Do you ever think anything you don't say?

I understand what you mean. I didn't have the typical experience growing up and there was a time that I was in that soup line. I had a job, I had an apartment but I just didn't have enough to get by. They aren't ALL sitting around doing jack shit smelling like garbage. I agree, many in there were crackheads / dealers or heroin addicts, but not all. There was the random woman feeding herself and a kid and stuff like that.

This was a long time ago, but I sill remember. No one ever waited on me though. I got some soup, some bread and a few rolls to take with me for later. Then the local gov started stepping in and tried shutting it all down. Making it a crime to feed hungry people.

I will say this, eating at one of those places never made me feel like I had more dignity. It did make me not hungry though and for that I am thankful.

Am fully aware there are decent people in the mix who are decent and grateful, and that not all are bums. No issue helping those people, but the guilt tripping is crap. Serving people though - no way - unless they are handicapped or something.

Unlike the 777 crew, the Tyler crew hasn´t shut off all communications. Preserving your identity in the non-MSM world of opinion is also quite commonplace, and has some advantages. Frankly, we are probably getting many more insider stories here about what is happening in the backround precisely because of said anonyminity.

These people look better put together than my Democrat OR Republican friends. They are neatly dressed, calm and seem overall well adjusted and adult. I am embarrassed at what a sick rabid dog the US is and unafraid to say it. Good luck seeing an orderly, well attended, intelligent vote anywhere near where I live in crackhead USA.

Sounds like you've already got a western style democracy. Actually, that voting apparatus looks way too cost effective, how many billions (of taxpayer dollars) did the candidates spend on their campaigns? All the gold bullion and currency reserves in the country? Yup, definitely a western style democracy.

Western 'democracy', as the post-Bush-Gore template indicates, is merely a Suggestion Box of pre-screened, pre-approved Candidates By, For and sometimes Of TPTB.

The voting exercise in the US, and now the EU, etc, is merely a "social convention", a "fire drill" of sorts, to keep the sheeple calmly grazing on decreed pastures. Only when these sheep change their DNA, will they truly be free -- not when they change "pastures" or "shepherds".

I used to describe it as escaping Farmer Gene's pasture. Most sheep are perfectly content to be in and stay in the field. A small number are walking along the fence, looking at the open spaces beyond. Even fewer have found a breach in the fence and are now free.

Thise pictures have to be fake. No Black Panthers standing around out front with billy clubs. We need to teach those losers how to have an election. Where's Rahm and the Chicago boys when we need them?

This Crimean affair is Putin's desperate convulsion to save his political face. Putin hates and is afraid Russian people. His own bodyguards from Chechnia. Again, Putin is a mobster, a thief, and no statesman.

Putin was so busy with Sochi Olympics, he and his intelligence services totally missed the Ukrainian revolution. As for Crimea Peninsular, it has no fresh water, no energy sources, and no food to feed itself but it has a large military base. Until now, all Crimea supply came from Ukraine. Consequently, If Ukraine cut Crimea supply (and they definitely will) the Russia will have to supply Crimea by the see. It will not be either easy or cheap. 20% of Crimea population are Tatars who are Muslims and hate Russians.

Ukraine is a 45-million country. It has no army but Russia has just a 680,000 strong army and no strategic reserves. Yes, Russia has nukes but it cannot use them in Ukraine. Russia cannot afford to have a war on its own boarders.

All Russia economy is built around selling oil and gas to EU and all oil and gas pipelines go to EU through Ukraine. Isn't it nice?

Summary

Ukraine is a geopolitical catastrophe for Putin's Russia and quite possible his own end. Putin's Russia has no friends and very many enemies. Putin has betrayed Russia and Russian people and he will pay for it very shortly.

"Wow this feed from ZH is off the Reuter and over 4 hours old, pls Tylers, could you do better if you tried? How about something original from a non-msm source?"

You could just cancel your zh paywall subscription and fuck off if you don't like the services you've paid so much of someone else's hard-earned money for, and which generates your contrived sense of license to complain like a petty little bitch all the time. Do you ever actually stop whining like a spoiled little sook, at any point? zh doesn't owe you one damned thing, not even your preferred version of the 'truth'.

Mincing little jerks like you sit around here for months or years getting entertained, informed, challenged, nearly cacking your pants laughing at least once every hour, at something you've read here. But then all of a sudden you spit-out your digital pacifier, and whine like sniveling little cunt at evil Tylers, for all the evil bastard acts performed by them, and how everyone else is responsible for your imaginary sense of deep grievances. All jerks using typical swappable troll pseudonyms like yours can go get stuffed, you're the internet version of a wallowing wino sitting in a puddle of urine and complaining about the rising damp and odor. Well, it's all you.

Don't like your own reactions to your own mind? Terrific! I understand completely. Fuck right off then. See if it's different anywhere else that you go. That'll be your little hint as to where the problem really resides.

I hear you. I found ZH in late summer 2008, and lurked for about a year before I decided to jump in. I could go on and on with my beefs about the site and the community, but ZH is probably the site I visit the most frequently, and that's saying a lot. Every so often I look through my bookmarks and consider other sites I've given up on over the years. It's a mark of the real accomplishment this site has achieved that it's still relevant enough to have its infuriating aspects after 5+ years. And the trolls, and just overwrought purist types, are an indication of that success as well. If they didn't care, they wouldn't bother.

And damn it's been a long time since we last talked, I remember it very well, as we were conducting a little strategic natter session about Japan, precisely at the time the initial news of a Japanese mag 9.0 quake came through.

She's got a helluva set of legs in that skirt, very fetching. Anyway, hopefully WWIII hasn't started due to us yapping again. ;-)

Wow, Element, I'm surprised you remember that! Actually, I'm surprised anyone around here remembers me. I've been off the ZH grid for a couple years. I needed to make some life changes, revolving around that damned tsunami, and I come back here and ZH is all...different. Fonestar kinda different. AKAK's gone etc. So I mostly just lurk now.

I don't know, but I have a bad feeling about this Ukraine business - there's no end to what the idiots in DC will do to prop up their egos. It does seem disaster follows our conversations....we'll see how this one goes.

I always paid attention to your remarks back then Vlad, you didn't make many of them but your comments on strategic matters told me you were a pretty shrewd observer. Anyway, it's great to have you back in here, and glad to hear you got through that tsunami ok. I did notice you had disappeared. It is a pity about akak, I figured there was more going on there in his life maybe, as his comments and reactions weren't adding up for me.

Well, I don't use a smartphone, but sometime I do read ZH on my little 8" tablet, and if I get the text barely large enough to read, everything's squeezed into a very narrow ribbon, sometimes a single word per line. I don't know anything about building a website, but some sites will let the side stuff run off so you can center your view on the "meat" in the middle, and scroll side-to-side if you want to see the sidebars.

As First World Problems go, it's a trivial one.

Oh, and Mrs. Kagan doesn't seem to know not to use a cell phone when it counts, either.

How about fucking no. Ever since this smartphone/tablet bullshit was invented, user interfaces and website designs have begun to resemble something straight out of cartoon. Huge buttons, configuration options eliminated and designs probably made by some autistic penguin on crack. Read ZH with a proper browser on a proper PC. Enough of the time wasting gadgetry already. \rant

The basic rule of the Ukraine Constitution states: "The source of power in the country is the people." People, but not a group of rebels and criminal Nazis, who seized power in Kiev via mass murder and deception.

"Open letter signed by Jewish leaders says Russian claim of rising anti-Semitism in Ukraine 'does not correspond to the actual facts.'"

"Jewish leaders in Ukraine have written an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, urging him to withdraw his troops from their country and rejecting his claims of anti-Semitic activity there."

"Your certainty of the growth of anti-Semitism in Ukraine also does not correspond to the actual facts."

"One of Ukraine’s most influential Jewish figures, the American-born rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich of Kiev’s Great Choral Synagogue, said of the allegations of anti-Semitism that 'the Russians are blowing this way, way out of proportion.'"

"Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki, spiritual leader of the Jewish community in Dnipropetrovsk, praised Mr Kolomoisky and denied Russian claims that extremists out to persecute Russians and other minorities had taken over power in Ukraine."

"'The Jewish community is very proud of his decision to leave his comfort zone and really devote himself...to protect the homeland and develop the region,' the Rabbi said."

"'What the Russians, with their propaganda on television and in their statements, are doing is trying to show that Ukraine is anti-Semitic, which is not true. It is very safe here for the Jews. This new Ukrainian leadership is not a fascist leadership, they are patriots,' he added."

"'I don’t belong [to Svoboda], but I take orders from their team. They know I’m Israeli, Jewish and an ex-IDF soldier. They call me 'brother,'' he said. 'What they’re saying about Svoboda is exaggerated, I know this for a fact. I don’t like them because they’re inconsistent, not because of [any] anti-Semitism issue.'"

"But Delta says the Kremlin is using the anti-Semitism card falsely to delegitimize the Ukrainian revolution, which is distancing Ukraine from Russia’s sphere of influence."

"'It’s bullshit. I never saw any expression of anti-Semitism during the protests, and the claims to the contrary were part of the reason I joined the movement. We’re trying to show that Jews care,' he said."

We have a special kind of democracy where the majority rules, unless it is the wrong majority, in which case we must recognize the rights of the minority. Minorities can take from majorities, but no majority can take anything but shit from a minority. All of it is justified by past injustices, so eventually it will be our turn to gain minority retribution right? I ain't holding my breath. Democracy has become nothing more than another tool to empower tyranny. We can't be against democracy, anymore than we can be against a female, black or gay politician.

It's not rigged. Vote cast in private booth. Visible boxes prevent ballot stuffing. No one is standing at the box to see how a person voted. And the ballot can be folded. This is how the vote in Europe, not with Diebolds.

[...] Pavel Zarifullin, director of Moscow’s Lev Gumilev Centre, is convinced that during his recent visit to the US, acting Ukrainian prime minister took along $20bln worth of national cultural values.

Referring to sources that he does not reveal, the author writes that these values might become guarantees for an International Monetary Fund’s loan. [...]

This gold belongs to all the people of Ukraine. Including the people of Crimea. This is a steal. This is theft, which was organized by an illegitimate impostor and his criminal associates from Washington.

The collective EU technocracy doesn't have a single spine to rub against a lamppost. Theirs is the Grima Wormtongue weasel-word modus operandi.

I mean...Baroness fucking Ashston handing out cookies in Kiev? Do me a favour.

This was CIA, up to and probably including the sniping that tipped the collapse. It's what they are best at - fucking up foreign countries one at a time - with no chance of redress and not the remotest accountability. Same as ODronabama and his remote control killing spree these past few years. He really turned the Nobel Peace Prize to toilet paper all by himself. Man's a cunt, and geopolitically a bloody thick one at that.

End result of this latest debacle? Another total humiliation for the POS Kenyan. Same old, same old for another three years.

US President Barack Obama said the Crimea referendum would "violate the Ukrainian constitution and international law".

That would make Obama a liar. Suprise surprise. Because.. the referendum violates neither of those two things.

However Obama/CIA creating a coup to replace Ukraine's constitutionally elected government does violate just about everything. Obama well and truly on the criminal side of events now days. NSA must have some nasty stuff on him.

He has always been a criminal. Fake SSN, Fake attendence at Columbia U, fake American, fake draft registration. Confessed drug user and seller. What more do you need? He ordered the murder of US citizens abroad without due process of law.

A political analyst says the United States’ plot to oust a sovereign elected government in Ukraine is a gross crime, adding that US President Barack Obama must be impeached.

“His [Obama’s] claim that is a national emergency in the United States is simply proof that Obama is declaring himself a dictator, that he’s acting outside of the constitution, outside of the Congress and that he must be impeached immediately if we are not to go with a thermonuclear confrontation with Russia in the coming days,” Mike Billington, editor for Executive Intelligence Review newsmagazine, told Press TV

Do people demand a really just system? Well, we'll arrange it so that they'll be satisfied with one that's a little less unjust ... They want a revolution, and we'll give them reforms -- lots of reforms; we'll drown them in reforms. Or rather, we'll drown them in promises of reforms, because we'll never give them real ones either!!